


Mirror Mirror On The Wall

by firelord-zuzu-the-jerkbender (fatherlords)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Burns, Fear, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Scar reveal, rated m to be safe bc angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:01:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25911778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatherlords/pseuds/firelord-zuzu-the-jerkbender
Summary: Zuko sees himself in a mirror for the first time since he was burned
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

Zuko's mouth was dry and his hands were shaking. Iroh had offered to stand beside him, but Zuko wanted to do this alone- needed to do this alone. He'd softly closed the door behind him, swallowing back the lump in his throat as he stared over to the mirror across the room. He stepped back slightly, pressing his back to the door and curling his fingers as though he could hold onto it like a safety blanket, like it could protect him.

He took a deep breath, and slowly, carefully pushed himself away from the wall. Every step felt heavy and light- like walking through a heavy mud pit but couldn't feel his body. It felt like he was numb, not quite there apart from the pain in his face. His skin felt tight, and hot, and sore.

He reached the mirror sooner than he would have liked, stood in front of it unable to look at it. He looked below the mirror, trying to will away the nausea in his stomach. It took him a while to find the strength to lift his head.

Fragility, Zuko thought, was a funny thing. Balancing on the edge of broken, but not quite tipped over the fragile line between irreparable and repairable. Knowing the smallest of mistakes could tip him over that line into territory he wouldn't acknowledge he was already in. It had an odd, bitter thrill to it, like he was waiting for the adrenaline of the fall from grace. He only had hope, and he knew it was false, but he was scared of letting go, of letting tendrils of darkness wrap around his soul and cut deep, constricting and comfortably familiar.

Sometimes he wondered, what would happen if he let go of hope? Would he find himself pulled back through the shadows, commanding his own chariot? Could he take control back, if he let the tendrils wrap around his nerves; could he integrate the darkness into him, and use it to feul his strength, strong enough to captain Time's winged chariot? Or would the darkness shatter into fractures of a mirror of ichor, all shards of his fractured hopes and dreams, every Zuko that ever was, is, and could have been broken for good? If he held up the mirror, would he find it dripped with his own ichor, or his father's? Who was sabotaging Zuko more, now? 

Zuko wondered if the line between fragility and strength, broken and whole, hope and pain, really existed. If they did, they were so blurred and obscured that the two opposing forces combined into one blinding bright light that Zuko wasn't ready to face. It would mean acknowledging that he was whole, complete, and he felt too fractured to accept that opposites could be counterparts, balance. He felt too fragile and too strong to delve deeper into it without tormenting himself over what it meant about how warped his self view had become from the trauma. And Zuko didn't want to admit to himself that he had trauma, because it never felt like enough. Nothing ever felt like enough, yet too much all at once.

He wondered if it would reflect on his face in crimson branding, if he'd always be marred with a truth that he wasn't ready to face. 

He looked up, the mirror before him too sheer, too intact and too solid. It was easier to look at yourself when the reflection was distorted, because you could blame the faults you see on a trick of the light, a falsehood within the cracks. It was easy to paste the breaks of the mirror over the breaks that ran deep in his veins and melted into golden ichor, molten vitriol and bitter poison to ignite and violently insight the flames within. 

Zuko didn't like facing himself without the distortion to buffer the reality he didn't want to face- the monster he was going to become if he let his fire consume and engulf him in rage and hatred until all he had to cling to was the crumbling golden embers of an honour that was never his to chase. 

He stared it face on, steeled himself, and began the process of revealing his latest mask to wear for a face. 

He looked vulnerable, scared. He'd always felt like he was mature, like he was grown up, thirteen, a teen- but now… looking at himself so vulnerable and scared, he realised that he was still just a child, and scared, hurt, abandoned child who wanted his mom. 

Zuko knew fear- knew it well; well enough to still remember the screams of a child facing his own mortality in a flash of white hot fire, but Zuko had never known insidious anxiety like this. It built up, bubbled up, festered. It didn't burn and combust with a scream, it choked and constricted and silenced from within. 

For a while, he couldn't do anything but stare, feeling as though he was trapped within the brick of a wall of distress, suffocating him, solid, immovable, preventing him from moving. He had to remind himself that he couldn't stand here forever, that he had been waiting for this for a while now.

He bowed his head, took a deep breath, and raised shaky hands to his head, fumbling for the edge of the bandages. He finds them pinned and tucked neatly, struggles through his trembling to unknot then. Each layer of bandage removed feels like a new weight of pressure in Zuko's chest, and he feels like he's going to be sick. He knows from experience that he won't be, though, so he breathes through it.

He's dizzy and weak, pulse pounding, precarious beats balancing the line between healthy and worryingly fast, and Zuko feels like he's going to faint. He doesn't, though, but the weakness spreads, cold as ice reality and hot as flames denial running cold through his veins. Anxiety is burning him, inner fire burning him out from the inside outwards. He feels as though there is no more time left, as though there will be no five minutes later, no day later, no year later. This feels like the end of everything, though the end of the bandage marks the next stage of his reveal.

He looks back up. 

He doesn't know how to react.

He feels the tears welling, bubbling in his chest, and all he can do is stare. He feels as though everything around him is crumbling. It falls without a sound, void of everything that would have been spiralling and burning to embers, golden embers of a future lost forever. Everything- honour, peace, birthright- melted away in the angry red of his father's handprint branded into his flesh. He tried hard to hold the tears back, lips pressed tightly together in a line. He can't scowl, pain running too deep. He can't shake how young he looks to himself. It's the oldest he's seen himself, but all he can think of is how small he looks, how small he is, and how big his father's handprint over his eye is. 

This one isn't going to fade this time.

He crumbles, tears welling hot and thick. He feels like he can't breathe, so he doesn't- he holds it, lets the pressure build, because it's less crushing than the reality he doesn't want to face. The tears start falling hard, and Zuko's trying hard to be okay, but his eye is burning up and his face is melted crimson, permanently ruddy blush distorting his face.

This isn't the distorted mask he needed.

This isn't what he meant.

He cries out as the fire of pain bubbles up too strong, the crippling nausea of shock gripping his body in a tight vice. He recoils in horror- jumps back- arms raised defensively in fear- startled- although Zuko doesn't know who or what he's afraid of.

The pain is heavy in his chest and the only thing lifting it enough to breathe are the raw screams he lets out. He screams until his breath turns to fire and burns his throat, and cries like a boy with nothing left to give, nothing left to lose. He sobs like a scared child, because he is a scared child. 

He smashes the mirror, except this time, the distortion doesn't make the reflection staring back at him any less real.

It feels like the end of everything.


	2. Chapter 2

Art by [dedtective](http://dedtective.tumblr.com) (thank you for letting me write this to go with your art!!)


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